


The Mockery of Stars

by LauraEMoriarty



Series: His Glowing Hands [5]
Category: Mass Effect
Genre: F/M, Rose Shepard, funerals suck
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-12
Updated: 2017-02-12
Packaged: 2018-09-23 16:30:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 399
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9665552
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LauraEMoriarty/pseuds/LauraEMoriarty
Summary: The stars seemed to mock him. In the days after Rose’s death over Alchera, Kaidan had to put a brave face on, and pretend that his heart wasn’t breaking whenever he looked at their son.





	

The stars seemed to mock him. In the days after Rose’s death over Alchera, Kaidan had to put a brave face on, and pretend that his heart wasn’t breaking whenever he looked at their son. He had the same grave, grey eyes that stared deep into him, piercing him with their intensity. They had spent time with Hannah and Dot, the young boy clinging to his grannies and not wanting to return to the Okanagan.

 

Kaidan had, despite wanting to get drunk and howl about how unfair it was, not done that. He had a son to look after, a son to raise and love, and even though the galaxy felt entirely empty without Rose, he had to go on.

 

Punching Joker at the wake had been a mistake. He knew the pilot really wasn’t to blame for his wife’s death, that she had done what Kaidan knew she always would do. Save other people, put their lives ahead of her own.

 

He didn’t think he could ever look at the stars without an acute sense of loss-- the feeling of numb emptiness that filled him. Hollow-- lost-- alone without Rose. He knew her well, had loved her with the intensity of a true love, and now, because of a stupid decision, she had gone.

 

_ “Come on, Kaid,” he heard her say, haunting his dreams and filling his nostrils with the scent that had been uniquely hers. “You’ve gotta live.” _

 

_ “I know,” he would tell the ghostly figure, “But I don’t know quite how.” _

 

_ “Yes you do. Put one foot in front of the other, just like you taught me after Akuze.” _

 

So he had done so. No matter the fact that he drank whisky until he passed out in his chair, the bottle falling from his hand, no matter the fact that every night he relived her dying. He watched, helpless, as Rose struggled to breathe in her suit, that he knew the oxygen would run out and she would suffocate, over and over in his dreams.

 

Kaidan felt broken, hollow, and like the whole galaxy was now a place where everything reminded him of her. A particular café on the Citadel brought back memories of happy days. Their apartment on Arcturus Station now unused, and he was sure there was dust an inch thick over every surface.

 

He had to go on, without her, because of Joker.


End file.
